AI has 2 billion users, but only 3% pay

AI has racked up a ton of users globally, but new research shows that very little money is being made by new tech that is incredible expensive to operate.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has reached a tipping point. People have adopted AI at an unprecedented scale, with almost two billion users worldwide, according to an estimate by the US venture capital firm Menlo Ventures. 

Also: ChatGPT was downloaded 30 million times last month - but its user base data is more shocking

And yet, very little money is being made, perhaps only $12 billion annually, with most of that figure accounted for by OpenAI. 

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET's parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

The difference between the enormous number of users and the small amount being earned constitutes "one of the ...